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Hearthstone: Winning Decks and Round Up From ASUS ROG Tournament at Dreamhack

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The ASUS Republic of Gamers 10th Anniversary Tournament took place at Dreamhack Leipzig this weekend. Orange, of Team Archon, battled through 13 other invited players and two qualifiers to emerge as the winner. The format was best of five last hero standing with a ban.

The Group stages produced very few surprises, with Thijs, RDU and Purple being the only three name players to fail to progress. All three of them had difficult groups. The results of the group stages are below:

In the knockout stages, Orange swept Xixo 3-0 with Hybrid Hunter, and then beat Mr.Yagut 3-2 in the semi final. SuperJJ swept Ostkaka 3-0 with Rogue, and then beat Ek0p 3-1 in the semi final, again using Rogue for the three wins. The final was anticlimactic as Orange produced another sweep, this time with him being the one to use Rogue. Orange's win will put him in the top 20 all time prize money winners for Hearthstone.

After his win, he published his decks on Twitter. Hunter has been seen very little in recent tournaments, and it was interesting to see it being instrumental in Orange's victory.

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The HCT Summer Championship took place from 13-15 October 2017. The top four players advanced to the World Championship in January.
After three days of competition the winner was Surrender, who joins Planet Odd teammate Hoej at the World Championship. Surrender won a tense final 3-2 against Orange, with the final game being a Highlander Priest mirror. In that game, Orange chose to mill Surrender for five cards to attempt to burn the combo, but the attempt failed. The VoD of the final can be found here.
Listed below are the other finishing positions, and the number of packs you will receive for picking each player as your champion in the "Choose your Champion" promotion.
Finalists, 4 Packs: Surrender, Orange.
Semi-Finalists, 3 Packs: JasonZhou, Purple
Quarter-Finalists, 2 Packs: Empanizado, OldBoy, Pavel, Tom60229
All other players were worth 1 Pack.
All of the decks from the event can be found on our new esports section here.

For the first time, the Hearthstone World Champion won't be determined at BlizzCon.
It was noticed that European venues weren't getting much love in this year's Hearthstone Championship Tour, but it turns out that the World Championship finals will take place in Amsterdam!
HCT will finish its journey in the Beurs van Berlage Conference centre, lasting from Thursday 18th January 2018 until Sunday 21st January 2018.
Anyone who physically attends the World Championship will get the following card back, while they will also be able to participate in on-site tournaments:

The tournament's format will be the same as all other seasonal Hearthstone Championships. 16 players will fight for a total prize pool of $1,000,000 USD! Eight players have qualified so far from the Winter and Spring Championships: Ant, DocPwn, Fr0zen, Hoej, Kolento, Neirea, SamuelTsao and ShtanUdachi. Four more players will qualify from the Summer Championship, that is currently going on this weekend. And the last four players will be seeded from the highest HCT point earners from each region (Last Call slots).
A question remains: without the World Championship this year, will there be any e-sports events at BlizzCon? According to its schedule, the answer is yes! There will be a Hearthstone Inn-vitational, where four teams of three Hearthstone personalities each will compete against each other in various formats; there is also the NA Tavern versus Tavern tournament.

Gameplay Engineer Josh Durica discusses a couple of upcoming changes to game mechanics.
These mechanics changes address some rare interactions (Disguised Toast has presented a lot of them in his videos), but they are still substantial changes in Hearthstone's core systems.
The first one is that "After" effects will only activate if they were present for the original action. The example presented in the video is that if you pull a Wild Pyromancer from your opponent with Shadow Visions, the Pyromancer won't trigger from the Shadow Visions.
The second change involves the sequence of triggers. Currently, the game checks for triggers first on the board, then on your hand and then in your deck (and with the same order for the second player). Now the game will simultaneously check for triggers in all three zones. This will prevent cards like Bolvar Fordragon to trigger off themselves.
A more in-depth explanation with various other examples and a glossary of terms can be found below:
Daxxarri
Hearthstone has a lot going on under the hood. The cause-and-effect relationships when cards are played are relatively straightforward and easy to predict, but because of the way certain events are timed, some very surprising things can happen in rare circumstances. We want cards to work the way that you guess they might—in other words, we want the game to work intuitively.

In the upcoming patch, we’re making some changes in pursuit of that goal. We want Hearthstone to continue to be strategically deep: a game of careful choices, calculated risks, and exciting events. So we want to be extra clear that this update isn’t a change in depth; instead it’s one step in an ongoing effort improve Hearthstone’s mechanics.

Hearthstone’s core gameplay won't change, but what will change are some rare edge-cases.

Please be aware: what follows is a detailed look at Hearthstone’s mechanics by Hearthstone Gameplay Engineer Josh Durica. If you want to delve into the nitty-gritty details regarding how this change will work, read on.

First, A GlossaryEvent
Events are interactions that occur throughout gameplay that can cause triggers to activate when they happen.

Example Events:
Whenever a Card is Played
After a Card is Played
Deathrattle (When this minion dies)
Whenever a Minion Takes Damage
At the End of Your Turn

Trigger
A trigger has two parts: an event (usually starts with “Whenever”, “After”, or “At”), and an effect. Sometimes triggers can also have a condition (usually noted with “if” or “while”, but sometimes noted by qualifiers like “your”).

Example triggers:
Whenever you cast a spell, gain +1 Attack.
After you cast a spell, deal 1 damage to ALL minions.
At the end of your turn, give another random friendly minion +1 Health.
If you control a Secret at the end of your turn, gain +2/+2.

Zone
In Hearthstone, there are three zones where triggers can happen, and they happen in order: First, any triggers in the Battlefield, then those that occur in a player’s Hand, and finally those that belong to cards in a player’s Deck.

Sequence
Whenever an action is taken, Hearthstone executes a sequence of steps to resolve what happens.

Here’s a simplified example sequence:
ACTION: A card is played (this begins the sequence)
EVENT: Whenever A Card is Played
o Whenever A Card is Played triggers resolve
Card ability activates
EVENT: After a Card is Played event occurs
o After a Card is Played triggers resolve

Here’s what that sequence would look like using actual cards, if you had a Questing Adventurer and a Flamewaker on the board, and then played Frostbolt:
ACTION: Frostbolt is played (this begins the sequence)
EVENT: Whenever a Card is Played triggers resolve
o Questing Adventurer gains +1/+1
Frostbolt’s text resolves: Deal 3 damage and freeze
EVENT: After a Card is Played triggers resolve
o Flamewaker shoots two missiles

This is a simple example, but a sequence can incorporate many events and triggers.

In Pursuit of the Goal
If you watched the video in our recent blog post, then you saw two different examples of cards triggering in counter-intuitive ways because they weren’t present when the sequence that activated them took place. That sets the stage for the primary goal we wanted to accomplish with these changes:

If you want to trigger off something, you need to be present and valid when that something first happens.

A more technical way to say this is: In order for a trigger to activate from a sequence, it needs to be present and valid at the time the sequence began.

This means any card featuring a trigger that appears in the middle of a sequence can’t activate during that sequence. So, when you play a card (or when a card is destroyed, or an attack occurs, etc.) you only need to consider what is currently on the board instead of guessing what the board state might be in the middle of the sequence. The Mindgames + Wild Pyromancer interaction showcased in the video is an example of an interaction improved by this change.

The valid qualifier is more subtle, but equally important. Before any trigger can activate, it needs to be validated. Each trigger has its own specific validation step, which allows the trigger to filter when it should and shouldn’t activate. For example, the Whenever a Card is Played event occurs when any card of any type (Minion, Spell, Weapon, etc.) is played. However, we want a card like Flamewaker to only trigger when a friendly spell is cast, so the Flamewaker’s validation step checks the card type and controller of the card played. In other words, Flamewaker’s trigger is only valid if the card played was a spell cast by Flamewaker’s controller.

Before our changes, we would validate triggers whenever their related event occurred, even if that was in the middle of the sequence. After the mechanics update, all triggers are validated when the sequence begins, and then they are only allowed to activate if they were valid from the start.

For further insight, let’s look at a bug that will be addressed by the update:

Currently, if you have a Djinni of Zephyrs on the board and cast Entomb on an enemy minion, your Djinni of Zephyrs will trigger, sending itself back to your deck. Not great for you or the Djinni! Djinni of Zephyrs triggers off the After a Card is Played event, and his validation step should only pass if the card played was a spell cast on a different friendly minion. Entomb is a spell, but it was cast on an enemy minion, so why does Djinni trigger?

Remember: the After a Card is Played event occurs after the ability on the played card resolves. In this case, that card is Entomb, and its ability moves the enemy minion into your deck. When the enemy minion enters your deck, it becomes a friendly minion. So, by the time the After a Card is Played event occurs, Djinni’s trigger is valid, because the minion is now friendly.

After the mechanics update, Djinni’s trigger is validated at the beginning of the sequence when the enemy minion is still on the battlefield, and because the trigger isn’t valid at that point (since Entomb counts as being cast on an enemy minion), it’s prevented from triggering when the After a Card is Played event occurs.

There is one final change we should mention, which is a tweak to when we validate triggers across different zones. Currently, the order in which triggers are validated and activated looks like this:

1) Validate Player 1 Battlefield triggers and then activate those that are valid.
2) Validate Player 1 Hand triggers and then activate those that are valid.
3) Validate Player 1 Deck triggers and then activate those that are valid.
4) Validate Player 2 Battlefield triggers and then activate those that are valid.
5) Validate Player 2 Hand triggers and then activate those that are valid.
6) Validate Player 2 Deck triggers and then activate those that are valid.

That approach meant new triggers could appear in the middle of a sequence and still be activated, and a trigger’s validation could even be affected by previous triggers’ activations. The Bolvar Fordragon/Spirit Echo interaction detailed in the video was an example of a weird interaction caused by this.

This means all triggers are validated before any trigger is allowed to activate. Since all triggers are validated using the same game state, then triggers that appear in the middle aren’t allowed to fire. It’s important to note that the order in which triggers are activated is unchanged.

Here are some more examples of sequences and their results before and after the mechanics update:

Minion Destroyed
Example Interaction:
Player 1 has a Piloted Sky Golem and a Wisp on the board (played in that order).
Player 1 plays Deathwing.
The Piloted Sky Golem spawn a Cult Master from its Deathrattle.Before Update:
The Cult Master's power triggers off of the Wisp's death, and Player 1 draws a card.After Update:
The Cult Master does not trigger off the Wisp's death, because it wasn’t present to see the Wisp destroyed.

Summon Minion
Example Interaction:
Player 1 has Starving Buzzard and Rotface on the board.
Player 1 also has a Flame Leviathan on top of their deck.
Player 1 plays Savannah Highmane.
Starving Buzzard triggers off of Savannah Highmane, causing Player 1 to draw Flame Leviathan.
Flame Leviathan triggers, dealing 2 damage to all characters.
Rotface triggers off the damage and summons Spiritsinger Umbra.Before Update:
Spirit Singer Umbra triggers off the Savannah Highmane and summons two hyenas.After Update:
Spiritsinger Umbra does not trigger off the Savannah Highmane, because she was not present when Savannah Highmane was played.

Thanks for Reading!
Of course, our work to make Hearthstone better won’t stop here!
Like the majority of odd interactions, each of these situations represents an edge case. While this update will address every situation we illustrated (among many others), there are still bound to be more. Keep in mind these are substantial changes to the core systems that underlie Hearthstone! We need to make them incrementally, and with the utmost care, but you can rest assured that we’ll continue to make improvements over time. (source)
Part of these changes are the fixed interaction between Evolve and/or Thrall, Deathseer and Unlicensed Apothecary. In a future patch, the team is also planning to make sure evolve effects won't activate any summon triggers.
jdurica
This mechanic change actually does not affect the Apothecary/Thrall interaction because that’s due to a different issue involving evolve effects activating certain summon triggers. However, we ARE specifically changing Apothecary in the next patch, so that it will no longer trigger off evolve effects.
Additionally, while it won’t make the next patch, we’re planning to make sure evolve effects won’t activate any summon triggers in the future. (source)

Another issue with UA that was mentioned on reddit at some point, is that he apparently triggers twice on minions that transform. I can see that it's much less relevant, but it would be nice to see it fixed anyhow.
This is something we plan to address! (source)
This mechanics update, along with the removal of Arena synergies, are expected to hit live servers within October.

The cycle of repeat Tavern Brawls continues this week with Spellbook Duel.
This is the 122nd Tavern Brawl overall and it's the second time it appears. Pick a class and then make a deck of 10 different cards. Instead of drawing cards each turn, you will Discover a copy of a card from your deck. Card draw mechanics won't get you the cards in your deck; instead you will get a 1-mana spell called Peruse, which in turn allows you to Discover a copy of a card from your deck.
Remember that cards like Fel Reaverand Tracking or Mysterious Challenger and Mad Scientist will remove cards from your Discover pool.
Decks that were popular the previous time were: the usual suspect in Tavern Brawls, Mage with Flamewaker and spells; Jade Druid; decks with Reno Jackson and/or Kazakus; and various Aggro decks (Murlocs, Pirates) that try to kill the opponent as fast as possible.
The community has started noticing that the Tavern Brawl game mode is slowly losing its novelty. We've had 122 Brawls so far and more than 50% of them are repeats. This week is another example: it's the fourth week in a row (almost a month) that we've had a repeat. The team seems to have been more busy with the Fireside Brawls, but regular Tavern Brawls also require some love!
Feel free to share old or new decks for this Tavern Brawl and tell us our thoughts about the state of this fun and casual game mode!